Why not eat horses?, part 2

[urbpan]

I thought I'd just posted about the horse slaughter issue, but apparently it's been a full year. The link in the previous sentence leads to my post about an email (from an animal protection organization I'm interested in), asking us all to lobby congress to make it illegal to slaughter horses for food. Apparently the House of Representatives has approved a bill to this effect.


My feeling is, if there are thousands of horses that need to be destroyed, why not sell the meat for food? One zoo director has become involved, as well, because the big cats that live in zoos eat mainly processed horse meat.

If you are against factory farming, or slaughterhouses, you must be against them for all animals. There is no important neurological difference between a cow and a horse that makes slaughter less humane for horses. Any opposition to horse slaughter comes from a sentimental attachment to one species over another, and is not logically consistent, and in my opinion, is basically indefensible.

There's also a xenophobic aspect to the bill: Americans don't eat horses, but the French and Japanese do. This is why the slaughter of cows will never be made illegal in the U.S.--We'd all starve! But since those weird foreigners are the dirty horse-eaters, why not ban horse slaughter?

I do not support factory farms, but I am in favor of humane slaughter. Treating animals like food does not bother me. Treating animals like some kind of inanimate raw material, like iron ore or something, that bothers me. Farm animals should be respected, their lives should not be misery, and we should expect meat to be expensive in exchange for treating our animals well.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I ate horsemeat as a child, which means I've already thought about this. I think it's more respectful to eat what you kill, and it's clear that since we do have herds of wild horses, they will have to be killed sometimes (their populations can't be regulated by natural forces).

I remember my father telling me that the prohibition against eating horse derives from attempts to drive out pre-Christian European religions, among whom the horse was a holy creature whose consumption was connected to various celebrations. He said that you could see where the holiness of horses and the ritual eating of horses had been by seeing where modern people are disgusted by the idea of eating them.

For myself, I won't eat primates, and I won't eat marine mammals,because the former are my family and the latter are family by adoption. There are other things I don't eat because I don't have the taste for them (most invertebrates). Somewhere I picked up the way to say it: "I do not know how to eat this thing." But marine mammals and primates, I refuse to learn how to eat them under any but the most dire circumstances.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

I've heard the opposite about why some cultures find the idea of eating horsemeat distasteful. Some guy on a documentary said it was because of some pre-Christian reverence for horses that English people don't like the idea of eating them. I did think it was BS though!

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Most of the horses being slaughtered aren't wild horses (of whcih we don't have many, having eradicated most of them to give the range over to cows and sheep), but instead are pet, racing, or working horses who are too old to work any more or are unwanted.

Dogs and cats go to the pound; horses get slaughtered and shipped overseas.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Dogs and cats mostly go out the chimney, as U.S. shelters kill (depending who you ask) between 5 and 10 million of them per year.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. I was just pointing out that the horse slaughterhouses are basically the pound for equines. Only they sell the meat, afterwards. Which seems to me, somehow, less wasteful.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

100% agreement. Not sure I could talk anyone into selling euthanized dogs for fur and meat, but it would be less wasteful.

this is not that reliable but

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Another thing about Holland. Whan I live there I knew a guy who worked at some kind on animal group. Part of their job was scooping up roadkill pets. Anyway, this guy assured me, and he doesn't strike me as a bullshitter, that all those flattened dogs and cats were put into a big freezer and sold to pet food companies. Don't know if it's true of false. Sounds like a recipe for CJD to me...

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Evidently quite a few of them are the direct result of PMU harvesting, which is kind of absurd since they have a synthetic analogue.

in MA we have a pound for unwanted horses, i'm not sure how many they can house at a time though.

[(Anonymous)]

pet, racing, or working horses who are too old to work any more or are unwanted

Nothing could be further from the truth, most horses at the slaughter house are young and in good health. Pregnant mares get sent to slaughter all the time. And yes, even wild mustangs are now being rounded up and shipped to slaughter.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

for americans especially it seems, horses are the same as "cows are in india"... worshipped, revered, almost mystical, holy. maybe. maybe not for the same reasons.

horses are noble.
cows are ... well ... cows.

i'm VERY certain i've eaten horse. disguised as hamburger, in school. i think we even noted the improvement in taste over the crappy cow meat they served ;P

on a proper working farm, well, nothing is wasted. your ferrets/fitch that are too old or injured to rat/rabbit anymore? stew pot. too many boy goats? off to the stew with them. old bessy dried up and can't produce no more? off to the grill.

even the adorable llamas and alpacas ... though they produce nifty fur for a long long time after their peak breeding years, they still don't live that long. you fed, you eat'em.

so horses? well, IF they HAVE to kill'em. sure. sell'em for food, even for tigers and lions if not people. the think though is, do they HAVE to kill them, especially the wild ones.

and like the modern man song (http://www.modernman3.com), roadkill is the way to go if you really want ethical, especially from the scavenging/reuse mindset :)

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